Tag: James P. Pinkerton

The future of Obamacare repeal and replace lies with the GOP’s past success in converting federal welfare funds into block grants that allow governors to tailor the funds to their own local needs. However, like welfare reform in the 1990s, healthcare reform today will only succeed if it demonstrates that it can improve lives and not just reduce spending. The flesh-and-blood well-being of folks is more meaningful to people than abstract budget numbers showing a deficit reduction.

It’s sort of poetic, in a sad way, that the resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price on September 29 coincided so closely with the expiration of the 2017 budget resolution on September 30. Those two events signaled the end, at least for now, of Congressional Republicans’ efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare through reconciliation; thus closing the 2017 chapter of the ongoing healthcare fight. However, the fight will likely continue next year. And so, we might consider ways to shift an approach that failed in 2017 to a strategy that could win in 2018.

Here are five takeaways from the two special elections on Tuesday: The victory of Republican Karen Handel over Democrat Jon Ossoff in the sixth district of Georgia, and also, the much-less-heralded victory of Republican Ralph Norman in the fifth district of South Carolina.

As we await the debut of the Trump administration’s healthcare policy, perhaps it will be helpful, providing a useful context, if we step back and consider the wisdom of the 19th century free-market economist, Frédéric Bastiat. In 1848, in an essay entitled “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen,” Bastiat argued that shortsighted people look only at immediate and obvious effects, which could be harmful, while farsighted people look to longer-term and not-so-obvious effects—which could be beneficial.

Donald Trump is talking about homeland security in clear-cut language that Americans can easily understand—and so of course the left is furious. Today’s Democrats, and their handmaidens in the Main Stream Media, just hate it when Republicans emphasize getting tough on lawlessness and terror. Indeed, liberals shudder when they hear the words, “law and order.”

Yes, I thought about that headline before I wrote it. Hey, I read the polls, too, and right now, for Republicans, they’re bad. I understand that the last ten nationwide surveys listed on RealClearPolitics show Hillary Clinton ahead of Donald Trump by an average of 5.5 percent. If that victory margin were to hold, Clinton would win in November with a popular-vote advantage somewhere between that of Barack Obama’s 2008 margin and his 2012 margin—which is to say, an electoral college landslide.